"The time limit in the debate meant that there would be no 'blue card' challenges allowed.

"I knew he would defend Trump's disgraceful blanket ban on people travelling to the US and I felt I could not sit there and let it go unchallenged, so I grabbed a piece of paper and with the thin biro I had I wrote out a simple message. I don't believe people like Farage should go unchallenged."

He added: "Populists and nationalists are lying to people. They are taking genuine fears and then saying immigrants are the cause, and walls and division the solution."

But the protest could see the London MEP disciplined by the EU Parliament after Ukip filed an official complaint against Dance. "I realised when I did it I took a risk, but I am happy to accept whatever consequences the Parliament decides upon," he said.

"Perhaps what we need to do is to be a little bit more constructive. All of us here say we are democrats. Well, here's a chance to prove it: Let us invite President Trump to come here to this European Parliament," the former Ukip leader said.

"I'm sure as democrats you would all agree that we need to have an open dialogue with the newly-elected most powerful man in world. If you throw that rejection back in my face, then you will prove yourselves to be the anti-democratic zealots that I always thought you were."

Farage was the first European politician leader to meet Trump after his shock White House victory in November. European Council president Donald Tusk has warned that the US president is a threat to the EU.

"For the first time in our history, in an increasingly multi-polar external world, so many are becoming openly anti-European, or Eurosceptic at best," he said, in a letter to 27 EU leaders.

"Particularly the change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy."